Spiral's real
name is Rita Wayword, better known as 'Ricochet Rita', a professional stuntwoman
who befriended Longshot when he first appeared on Earth. Rita was attacked by
her evil, future self which led to her meeting Longshot and falling in love with
him. When Longshot sought to return to his home dimension, the Mojoverse, the
lovestruck Rita went with him, only to watch Longshot fail and be captured by
the dimension's evil overlord, Mojo. Longshot was promptly mindwiped to forget
all about Rita, while a much worse fate was left for Rita.

After holding her prisoner for several years (at which point Rita was made to
serve as guardian for Mojo's army of "X-Babies"), Mojo forced his
chief scientist, Arize, to perform extreme physical and mental body
modifications onto Rita to recreate her into a loyal subordinate. These
experiments left her with six arms (two of which are robotic), turned her hair
grey, and drove the young woman insane through forcibly evolving Rita's mind to
the point that she could see into other dimensions that were used for
time-travel/teleportation. He also trained her in the dark arts of magic and
body modification, so that she could use these skills to mutilate others like
Mojo had mutilated her. Finally, in a cruel act of manipulation, Mojo sent
Spiral back in time to set into motion the events that led to her former self
becoming Mojo's prisoner and become Spiral by attacking her past self.

Spiral was an odd
choice as a character to debut in Capcom's X-Men: Children of the Atom, but
Capcom's reasoning behind adding her quickly became clear. Her animation and
moveset were immediately memorable, and for those who didn't know her from the
start, she became an instant classic fighting game character.

Spiral is one of the first cases whereCapcom proved that they could bring an
"obscure" Marvel character
into the limelight and make them pretty damn awesome. Can you think of a better
Spiral video game or TV appearance? Hell no you can't! ;) Later in MVC2, she became an even more dynamic
character and was among the top tier in the game. Her corner traps and
projectile spamming is somewhat cheap, but actually very fun to use if you ask
me.